’Denmark Switches.’ A national campaign to collectively move off Big Tech. March 20th is Big Switch Day. I’ve named my goal now. I’m already almost deMicrosofted, except for my photo archive. I moved to Libre & Tuta mail and have been purging photos as I await the release of Tuta drive. Now I’m committing myself to just get the photos off OneDrive and on to my computer, that I own, in my house, by March 20th. Then I’ll delete Microsoft. Then I’ll boast about it on the Fediverse.
”42% of Danes want to try alternatives to Big Tech. 68% would like to reduce their screen time. But far fewer act on it.
Habits hold us back. Network effects bind us to the same platforms as everyone else. This only changes if we shift collectively. When we shift together, new habits become easier to maintain.
When enough of us shift simultaneously, alternative platforms gain the critical mass they need. When we act collectively, change is possible.”
42% of Danes want to try new alternatives to Big Tech. 68% would like to reduce their screen time. But far fewer act on it. Together, we can change that. What is Danmark Skifter? Danmark Skifter is a national campaign where thousands of Danes take back control of their digital
Before I could pick my 2026 goal for #DanmarkSkifter, I did a digital status. I was mildly surprised when I saw my 2025 digital changes together. I looked at the list and thought: ’Tell me you hang out in the Fediverse without telling me you hang out in the Fediverse.’
From Outlook to Tuta
From Office to Libre
From MS Authenticator to Ente Authenticator
From Google Play to F-Droid
From Spotify to AntennaPod
From Firefox to Vivaldi
From DuckDuckGo to NoAIDuckDuckGo
And I bought a back-up drive.
I've added a new 2026 Digital Resolution to my 'Denmark switches from Big Tech' goals.
I had already switched from Patreon to Steady. Thanks to @JohanEmpa for making that possible after he added Steady as a Mastodon.green payment option.
Now my Microsoft subscription is the only thing left on PayPal and I'm almost deMicrosofted. So I'll be cancelling, not renewing, that. So now I commit to deleting my PayPal account. Today. Inspired by @oldrup, who just did this.
I'm enjoying the results of disenshittifying my digital life so much that I need a more celebratory word for it than 'disenshittifying'. So far, every solution I’ve switched to is better than the Big Tech one I left. Not ’better’ as in ’not enshittified’, but better designed. LibreOffice: does what I need and only does what I tell it to do. AntennaPod: much better features than Spotify. Tuta: functional and calm and 10 months later, I still haven’t received a single spam mail.
Organic Maps. Another example of an app I found in F-Droid that turns out to be nicer than the BigTech one I switched from. Not disenshittification, but enhancification. It's great for walking & cycling. Nice to use. Works offline. Feels 'human-sized'. First time I used it was to find a bus stop. It showed me the right one & noted 'shelter + bench'. To compare, I looked the same up on Google Maps (web). The actual map was barely visible behind ads for local businesses.
I told local friends who know the area that I would get the bus from the bus stop near the Squirrel In A Top Hat.
What are you babbling about, what squirrel, there's no squirrel, they said.
The map says there’s a squirrel in a top hat, I said.
No it doesn’t, they said, showing me squirrel-less Google Maps.
Yes it does, I said, showing them the Squirrel In A Top Hat annotation in Organic Maps.
I sent back this picture from the bus stop.
While making the final preparations before cancelling my Microsoft subscription in time for Denmark's Big Switch From Big Tech Day (March 20th), I discovered I still have a Dropbox account. If I'd forgotten I had it, then I was just digitally hoarding and don't need it. So this was an easy one to walk away from. Took me less than 20 minutes to delete the files and delete the account. So easy that I should be embarrassed to name it as A Goal and boast about it, but I'm not.
@CiaraNi Ah, you're giving me the push I need. I started deleting everything from my Dropbox account quite a while ago, but then didn't finish the job. (I think I have all the files elsewhere, but I need to be sure.)
I haven't used Dropbox in ages and don't pay for it, but I still should get rid of it. Goal for March 20, even though I don't live on Denmark.
@jeridansky I hadn't paid for it either, it was just the free version. Which made it easy to forget about when I hadn't used it for years. It also made it easy to delete. I like the idea that you are the international branch of #DanmarkSkifter. I don't think the nice people at the campaign would mind anyone, anywhere, filling out one of their Digital Resolution goal cards even :-)
Hvad kunne du tænke dig at ændre ved dit digitale liv i 2026? For nogle er det motiverende at lave et nytårsforsæt, der sætter ord på intentionen. Andre vil bare gerne tilmelde sig kampagnen, være en del af fællesskabet og se, hvad der sker. Det er helt okay. Hvis du
@CiaraNi Happy to be the international branch of #DanmarkSkifter!
And I (mostly) did it, before the deadline! I had to look at all the files I had in my Dropbox and decide if I could just trash them or if I wanted to save them (or their contents) elsewhere, so it took a bit of time. But it's done: removed the Dropbox folder from my Mac, removed the app from my iPhone.
Deleting my account may be a problem, though, since the email associated with my account is no longer valid, so I can't get the 6-character code they send after I enter my password. No easy way to contact Dropbox about this, but I did send off a request using the one form I could find.
@CiaraNi And Dropbox support was surprisingly helpful, temporarily removing the need for the 6-digit verification code on login (after I answered a bunch of security questions) so I could get in, change my email to my current one, and delete my account.
So it is totally gone as of a few minutes ago! Before the 20th!
@CiaraNi I have 231 entries in my password manager! Lots of those have an old email and I may try cleaning them up, but they aren't doing any harm, either.
Adobe (whose products I haven't used in years). Newspapers I used to subscribe to. Sites where I made a single purchase, years ago. My old website hosting company.
@jeridansky I've never used a password manager - that hadn't struck me, that it would be a way to see how many single services you had access to.
"I may try cleaning them up, but they aren't doing any harm, either."
That's my thought too, about any that I might belatedly remember and no longer have easy access to. Some harmless loose threads must be allowed or else the whole process will feel too overwhelming to manage, I think.
They are required by GDPR to receive and process takedown requests.
But of course they will hide how to do that.
A legal letter to their physical address should do the trick though. They will have an office somewhere in Europe at least.
@androcat But I'm in the USA, so the GDPR doesn't apply, sadly. But I've already gotten an email response (not a resolution, but a note that my request has been passed off to the appropriate team) so maybe they'll take care of this just fine.
Not that keeping the account open causes any real problems — they have very little info on me — but I'd still like to clean this up.
@CiaraNi
When our family visited the UK last fall, I did the same thing. Almost every BnB gave us a discount for direct booking., and we got to deal directly with the owners.
Here's a good way to turn the tables on those third party booking sites: reverse showrooming. Use the online resource to find the lodging you're interested in, then bypass them entirely with a direct contact on their own website or by email.
@donaldham This is exactly it. Every time, there's a discount, or a good offer like free breakfast, or something like that.
'Reverse showrooming.' I love this phrase and will be adopting it, please and thank you. I've done this too, browsing Amazon (back when its site search actually worked) or Booking.com websites to narrow choices down or check some details, then I'd buy the actual book at my local independent bookshop or book the accommodation directly with the hotel or B&B.
@CiaraNi
From 2001-2011 I was an emerging tech consultant for Fortune 500 companies. A huge concern then was showrooming.
That's the practice of going to a physical presence retailer, say Best Buy, to inspect a TV, then buy it online from Amazon.
It's very satisfying to turn the tables on big tech.
Before we planned our UK trip (England/Scotland) I was alerted by the Rick Steves site that BnBs were vanishing, put out of business by the Air BnB model.
They also reduce housing stock, are horrible neighborhood nuisances, and have all the revulsion factor of private equity funds. So we went out of our way to give business only to real BnBs with onsite owners.
In Rancho Mirage, the CA desert resort town where I live, short term rentals have been outlawed.
@hanktank61 This is it - the real conversations, the real chats with the B&B owners or with the actual human staff and actual locals working in the hotel. The cup of tea. The 'oh I remember you, you stayed here for your friend's wedding, wasn't it?', etc. The opposite of 'Keybox, that is it'.
@CiaraNi @hanktank61 @donaldham
The only time I ever used AirBnB was on a last-minute trip to Berlin in 2019. I had to find somewhere fast so it had to be AirBnB. Turned out that the 'real home' was an ensuite hotel room in a purpose-built hotel. Fine as far as it went but not a home at all. Then they badgered me to give the owner a review, which I refused to do.
I recently got an AirBnB email about T&Cs, which was the perfect opportunity to officially dump them.
@riggbeck @CiaraNi @hanktank61 @donaldham
I tried to use them exactly once. I was planning on tacking a visit to Boston onto a trip to New York to visit folks at MIT and Harvard. The little hotel a colleague recommended that was about half way between the two was full, but I found a place on AirBnB nearby and placed the booking. My flight was due in late, so I wasn’t going to get to the place before 11pm. I sent them a message to confirm the late arrival process a couple of days before departure.
They told me I’d cancelled my booking.
I told them I hadn’t and asked them to reinstate it.
They told me they’d already rented the room to someone else.
I contacted AirBnB support and they told me the card had been declined. Rather than asking me for an alternate means of payment or even telling me, they’d silently cancelled the booking.
If I hadn’t contacted the host, I wouldn’t have known and would have turned up at 11pm with nowhere to stay.
At that late time, only one hotel had space left, was on the wrong side of the river (would have needed taxis to get to the places I needed to be) and it was charging $750/night. It ended up being cheaper to cancel that leg of the trip entirely.
Shortly after that, the university’s travel insurance announced that they would not cover AirBnB. A lot of my colleagues complained but I fully understood why.
@david_chisnall That seems to be a common AirBnB experience. Commercial accommodation, more unreliable and unregulated
@CiaraNi I've long been a believer in booking directly, for all the reasons you've noted. I've even stumbled through booking a stay at a French farm via a phone call, relying on my extremely limited French and the structured way such conversations always tend to go. Great place, well worth working through my awkwardness.
AirBnB seemed like a decent idea when it really was "use my couch" or even spare bedroom. In its current form, it just soaks up what should be housing stock. Never used it, never will.
@jeridansky That's it exactly. AirBnB went fast from peer-to-peer couch-surfing to capitalist ventures that are more harmful than regulated hotels and real B&Bs. Soaking up the housing stock: yes, this is a terrible consequence of it.
Encounters like yours, stumbling through a foreign-language booking, are so charming and fun. I didn't use AirBnB either but did use Booking.com for a few years. I am enjoying not using it now. I am glad to be back to direct bookings and direct chats with humans.
@kiesa @CiaraNi Hmm, something I never thought about. My family (2 adults, 2 kids) had no problem booking one room in non-fancy hotels or motels when I was young; perhaps one bed was a rollaway.
But that was many years ago. Things might have changed, and larger families would have issues my family didn't.
Ciara
JWcph, Radicalized By Decency
Jeri Dansky
Androcat
Sely Friday
Orewoet
Donald Ham 
hanktank61
Fardels Bear
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
Kiesa
herbert
rhempel
Don Hawkins - W7DAH
borisentiu
Enola Knezevic